Since the public found out in the last few days, that Prince William is left-handed, there has been a lot of surprise and interest.    It was as if people had found out his deepest, darkest secret!

As I research in the field of dyslexia, I wasn’t surprised that he was a ‘lefty’ as some people call it; however, I was surprised by some members of the public’s reactions.  Why should it matter that he is left-handed?  One reason some people said they thought that Princess Kate wrote a lovely message on the board for all the working members to read was that if Prince William had written on the white-board, the sleeve of his jacket would have rubbed it out when he came across the white-board.  This was good observation and very true of course because that is exactly what does happen.  You don’t notice it quite as much in a book because you can turn the book slightly when writing.

But the other reason I was surprised is that there are several members of the Royal Family, who are left-handed, for instance, Princess Beatrice spoke about her own struggling at school in a film a year or so ago.  Sophie Countess of Wessex always uses her left-hand when taking photographs, and of course, we can’t forget Prince Harry.  All of these royals struggled in their own ways and all have succeeded by finding ‘another way of working successfully’.

Left-handed people ‘may be better at verbal tasks’ scientists claim

But, I keep coming back to why the public appeared to be surprised the other day because ten per-cent of the world’s population is left-handed which appears to have been relatively steady for approximately 10,000 years.

Research from scientists at the University of Oxford carried out studies with over 400,000 subjects, looking at the correlation between language areas of the brain. These studies concluded that left-right hand symmetry is determined very early. For instance, when viewing snails, it would appear that the snail ‘shells coil’ to the left or the right in the initial stage of their development.

Dr Wiberg stated that ‘in left-handed participants, the language areas of the left and right sides of the brain communicate with each other in a more coordinated way.’ This appears to make left-handed people better at verbal tasks.

I would have thought that if both sides of the brain were working together at the same time, it would give left-handers an advantage in lots of other areas, but that doesn’t appear to be the case (or maybe they weren’t looking for any other signs).

What do other people think?